


Rest you Gentle

by AniasTrevelyan (Callmeisolde)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Complete, F/M, Inquisition is family, One Shot, Sibling AU, Trespasser Spoilers, dorian pavus - Freeform, inquisitor sibling au, minor male trevelyan/dorian pavus, trevelyan sibling au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-16 22:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5843284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmeisolde/pseuds/AniasTrevelyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anias Trevelyan, middle child from the wealthy noble House Trevelyan of Ostwick, considers her familial relationships and how different life as inquisitor might have been had her youngest brother, Garret Trevelyan, survived the Conclave. </p><p>Based on the idea that, with multiple playthroughs, when you choose your starting character, you are choosing the survivor. What would Garret be like as a companion? What role would he have in the unfolding of the story?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest you Gentle

I wasn’t ready. Not for any of it.  

That makes it sound like a little more preparation might have helped but I suppose that isn’t true either. I would never have been ready for what happened at the Conclave.  

I promised my parents I was going as a true emissary; that I would fly the Trevelyan colours, behave myself, and mingle with the chantry sisters and other delegates. I promised I wouldn’t do anything rash. Of course I’ve never had trouble lying, not to them.  

I had one reason for wanting to attend Divine Justinia’s Conclave. My younger brother Garret was a mage.  

Despite being holed up in the Ostwick circle for the majority of his life, we had managed to remain close. A feat achieved through meetings in the dark of night and messages written in invisible ink on crisp parchment, tucked into a knotted tree or a nondescript care package from home. Sliding beneath the detection of the Templars (always more concerned about detecting magic than simple skullduggery), I became adept at avoiding authority figures.  

Garret would chide me softly -- strong arms thrown around my shoulders in a celebratory squeeze that betrayed how much he really appreciated my visits.  

"You take too much risk." His voice was a thin whisper from between clenched teeth.  

“I’ll worry about myself, thank you.”  

“Don’t be like that Anias, I’m happy to see you.”  

A precise memory, a specific visit to the Circle sharp in my mind as I sit up at night. It was the last time I saw him.  

Even in the heavy blue shadows of the courtyard where we meet, I can tell he is thinner than I remember. When you only see a person sporadically those small differences stand out in sharp relief. I can see the bones in his wrists above the grey sleeves of his robes, purple darkness beneath his eyes. His strawberry blonde hair is longer than he prefers it, unruly strands dangling in his eyes. He touches them unconsciously, straightening them against his forehead.   

How often I think about this moment? I try to remember every detail, every clue.  

It had been more difficult than usual to slip into the Circle. Security was increasing, more Templars, tighter rotations and even additional lamps burning in the gardens. The Chantry’s fist was closing over the mages since the disaster in Kirkwall and the cracks between its fingers were shrinking. I am vaguely aware I might not be able to slip through unnoticed again. 

“How has it been then?” I ask, “You look too thin.”  

“I’m fine.” He pulls away from me, looks down and to the left, thinking more than talking. His hand again goes to his hair.  

I grab his arm and force him closer, reaching up to where the fringe skims his eyebrows. My brother grimaces, his demeanour that of a chided child, still a boy in so many ways (or is he like that only in my recollection?). Poorly hidden by the scraggly hair, his temple is bruised purple and dark, yellow mottling the edges. In the epicentre of the bruise, there is a red cut with two black stitches near the top.  

“What’s this now?” my voice shakes, my vision blurring with rage.  

“It’s nothing ‘Nia.”  

“Did one of _them_ do this to you?” I sound strangled, the effort afforded to keep my voice level pulling muscles tight across my brow, jaw clenching. When I speak of the Templars I want to spit.  

Garret still will not meet my eyes; his hand rests on the back of my own, skin cold. “No.”  

“Then who, another mage?”  

He shakes his head, “I don’t want to talk about it, sister. Can we – focus on other things?”  

I bite my bottom lip, eyes darting to the sky in an attempt to clear them. Underneath the red I am seeing, there is a smear of shame for the pain I have failed to prevent. The protection I cannot extend to him here. 

“Tell me of the children.” Garret coaxes. This is always how it is with us. Thedas is dissolving outside the tower; first the blight, then the mage rebellion, that nasty business in Hilamshiral -– I wonder, not for the first time, how much of this reaches him inside these high walls.  

He sinks down under the oak tree that watches over us and I lower myself into the grass next to him. For a moment -- blades of damp grass protruding between my fingers and pricking my bare calves -- I feel like a child again. He is asking of my elder sister Annabelle's children, Adrian and Devina. 

“They’re children,” I shrug. In truth, I haven’t been home much to see them. “Adrian has taken to whacking me in the knee with that wooden sword you made him.” I must be grimacing because Garrets eyes sparkle with mischief. I quite remember an equally annoying five year old with tangled bright red hair and sparkling blue eyes chasing me through the tall grass outside our families’ estate.  

“And what of the baby?”  

“She’s three now, toddling around and pulling hair and putting everything into her mouth.”  

Garret seems surprised, eyes widening. It is his turn to grimace. He turns his face down, plucking absently at the grass.  

“Annabelle sends her love. I mean, she thanked me for the gifts. I didn’t exactly tell her who they were from but I think she knows…”  

He nods, absently as though he is not hanging on every word.  

“Gerault was transferred to a Circle in Orlais. Mother thinks it will be safer for him there -– after Kirkwall. She writes him often but it’s hard to get messages through lately.”  

I find my eyes drifting back to the angry cut on Garrets face. When he was eight, fire sprang from his hands.  

We were in the courtyard with our mother, I can’t remember what set him off –- a petty child scrap, he said, I said -– suddenly my tunic was burning. I remember my mother leaping over me and pushing me into the dirt. When I could see again, Garret was on the ground. Our elder brother stood over him with his sword in his hand, blood dripping from the hilt. The Templars were there within hours to carry Garret away, half-conscious, bleeding from where he had been struck. When his hair is short I can clearly see the half smile of the scar above his ear.  

“Garret,” I reach out and take his hand in both of mine. Time is passing too quickly and soon I will have to away under the cover of darkness, before the shift change. “If you tell me it isn’t safe here anymore, if … you’re in any danger, I’ll take you with me tonight. We could go to Ferelden, or even Antiva, anywhere you wanted.”  

He stares at me a long moment, I am not privy to these thoughts; they flit across his face in a wave.  

“I know.” is all he says, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.  

I can’t offer him anything more.  

I don’t recall everything else we say to pass our remaining minutes together. He tells me a bit of the other mages, his tutors, and his studies. He says some things I don’t quite grasp about magical theory, his voice tilting upwards in fervour, his love for the research evident in his excitement. I _do_ remember every intonation of his voice, every smile and every clipped laugh.  

At the end, we embrace and I don’t hold him long enough.  

I let go too soon.  

“Rest gentle, sister.”  

“Sleep sound Garret.” It’s a ritual, our goodbye. Begun when we slept in the same room five feet from each other, whispering in the dark.   

I don’t look back, not after I start to climb. I have lingered too long already and if I miss the shift change, I will have to create some kind of distraction to get past the wall. One time I lit a tree on fire, probably got some poor unsuspecting mage thrown in the dungeon, a strategy I’m not keen on repeating.  

In the end, I make it out all right.  

# 

It’s two days later and I stroll into the dining hall of the Trevelyan estate only to find it empty.  

No place settings on the table, no fire in the grate. The hall is drafty and the shadows are long, pierced by bright streams of golden light. I squint into the contrast, spying a young serving boy standing awkwardly in the corner by the washbasin.  

 “Where is everyone?” I shade my eyes as I check the suns position in the sky, still early, I haven’t slept too long.  

“Lady Trevelyan is sequestered in mourning, Lord Trevelyan is attending her.” He stumbles over some of the words, _sequestered_ , someone else must have given this small speech to him, he’s been repeating it in his head all morning waiting for someone to stumble by.   

My eyebrows knit, a black premonition swirling just out of reach. A shadow of unease. I try to grasp it, but my mind is unwilling.  

“Mourning?”  

The boy, his name is Issa I remember, shifts his weight again, eyes casting around for anything upon which they can alight comfortably. “The Circle of Ostwick has fallen, Messere. The lady mourns…”  

I don’t remember what carefully rehearsed thing he said next, a red haze obscures my vision and I stumble towards a chair, relinquishing my feet with a thud. It is not until I release my held breath that my vision begins to clear.  

Breathless, I lower my head to my knees and suck in air through my slackened jaw. _But I was just there_ _!_  

What was happening within the cold stone of the tower while Garret and I sat side by side in the lee of the oak? In my memory, the windows of the tower are filled with narrowed red eyes, Garrets mannerisms are fearful, he is trying to tell me something -– trying to ask for my help. I know it was not so, but I am consumed with it. What sign might he have given me? What warning?   

I remember sitting there, head between my knees for what seemed an age. The serving boy stepped towards me, hesitated, left me alone. I remember raging too, picking up anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor and hurling it across the room. I remember blood welling to the surface of my skin and feeling no pain when the glass of a window pane sliced my hand.  

When I came to myself the sun was very low in the sky. The cool crisp air of encroaching night made my flesh prickle. I was outside, sitting in the dirt next to the mouth of a small river. How did I get there? There was blood smeared into my clothes and I _hurt_. After the Templars took my brother away I remember raging for hours, locked in my room so I couldn’t follow them. Hands pounding and splintering the wood of my door until they bled. This was like that. They would take him from me, and I would drag myself through the dirt and push myself to my limits to get him back. 

Thinking more clearly, I consider my mother and father waiting at home. I should speak with them, offer some small gesture, some words that might express the disgust I am feeling now -– they will mourn the son they sent to die. Shed their tears, beat their chests -– but in the end I might hate them more for it. _They put him_ _there_.  

I am filthy, I am aching, my eyes are burning with unshed tears. I struggle to my feet and step down to the lapping water. From my vantage point, I can see almost all the way to Brandel’s Reach. The river before me ebbs with the power of the Waking Sea and the greater Amaranthine Ocean beyond, roaring as it recedes. I feel like the riverbed, gradually emptied.  

Reduced.  

The moon is rising but the blinking of the stars is obscured by darkness – the sky thick with something. Clouds or smoke? Even if the circle fell, he might have survived. I wrap my heart around this hope, pushing it down inside me with the dreams and fears I have always held for my baby brother, ever since the first time he was set in my arms, pink, new, and crying. 

I wash myself, stripping out of my clothes in the darkness and wringing out the blood with the water.  

The next day I will search for him, shift through the rubble for what clues I can find.  

It has been over three years now, and I am still sifting through that mess.  

# 

What really happened at the tower? A collection of jumbled accounts collected by Lelianas agents and filtered through her enviable skills at lie detection. A series of written anecdotes pulled together by Josephine and lovingly bound for my perusal. Some of it even rings true.  

I think I saw him after, at the Conclave.  

I couldn’t be sure, the first time was a single glimpse. I was looking, scanning every face –- a shock of strawberry blonde hair and a green coat -– could it be?  

“Garret!” I move closer through the crowd, mages shying away from me as I pass, they can tell I am not one of them and that means danger. I am close enough to reach out and touch the hem of his sleeve when strong hands clamp over my shoulders and spin me around. I curse as I lose sight of the man who might have been my brother, struggling against the gauntlets clamped around me.  

“Anias! Calm yourself.”  

I squint up into the helmeted visor, mulling the voice over in my head. The Templar releases my arms, flipping back the visor to reveal the brown eyes of my eldest sibling.  

“Gerault,” I exhale relief, swallowing the disappointment.   

“What are you doing here Anias?” He glances around us, and I wonder if it is paranoia that has aged him or the slow stringing of time. I have forgotten how long it has been, maybe three years. He is beginning to grey at the temples like our father and his weathered face is lined finely around his mouth and eyes. How long until my own mouth creases like the surface of an apple set out too long?  

“I’m here …” I straighten myself, puffing out my chest in some silly imitation of our sister Annabelle's preening, “as a representative of our family.”  

“Lady’s breath Anias,” He starts pushing me away from the crowd, to the edge of the courtyard. The swearing is typical of him, the one vice of an otherwise pristinely devoted man.  

“Blight it Gerault! Get off!” I shirk off his hands, it is a matter of pride that I’ve never let him control me (or out curse me). His eyebrow arcs and he gives me the traditional look that belongs to elder brothers. Lack of amusement, disappointment. He holds up his hands pleadingly.  

“Damn it, I haven’t seen you in five years Anias, since I left Kirkwall. They keep moving me around…” When he sighs and pushes that greying hair from his temples, he looks almost boyish. “Well. It’s all gone to shit now.”  

I bite the inside of my cheek. Five years. I should have remembered that. For a moment, I feel the twinge of guilt that often accompanies being forced to speak with my elder siblings.  

“Sorry, Ger, sorry. I’m glad to see you. It _has_ all gone wrong hasn’t it.” I forget myself, wrap my arms around his hard iron-clad body, jagged and poking and unrelenting. He surprises me by hugging back.  

“I know Ostwick fell, have you heard anything about Garret?” the question surprises me. Gerault served at the Ostwick circle for a few years and I heard he spent that time making Garrets life miserable, he hasn’t shown much interest in the subject of his younger brothers welfare since Garret was revealed to be a mage.  

“No, I was hoping you might know…”  

“Mother said there was nobody, he could be here.” Gerault takes one look at me and knows. “Ah, that’s why you’re here.”  

“If he escaped with the rebels…”  

“I’ll keep an eye.”  

“If you see him…” I want to say leave him, don’t say a word. I can’t trust Gerault not to turn him in a second time. I feel that old hurt twist somewhere near my heart. My sentence trails off and Gerault doesn’t complete it. He knows how I feel, I’ve raged against him before, beating my fists against his chest like a child (I was a child). I’ve bloodied myself and him, and he’s stood against the tirades without striking back. I wish he would have stuck me, fought me for real. I’m good with a dagger. It might have helped.  

Now we’re both adults and maybe we’re something like equals. He in his spiky silver armour adorned with the Templars eye, me in my green coat bearing the Trevelyans Lion crest, dual daggers strapped to my back and lock picks to my belt. We’ve each chosen a life apart.  

He says something about finding me later, don’t do anything stupid. I return a sharp retort, it’s casual, normal even. It’s an ellipses, not an end.  

I’m glad I hugged him.  

Not long after, still searching, I think I see the blond head again –- this time I’m almost certain. I catch a glimpse of the round half smile of the scar above his left ear, where the hair doesn’t grow. I follow him from the courtyard through a small ornate doorway. The door leads into a dilapidated hall, one that hasn’t been meted out the Chantries attentions. I call his name but he’s too far away from me, he passes through another door and I quicken my pace.  

I’ve thought a lot about these moments since they happened. I turn them around like a coin in my hand, studying its surface under different lights. I never thought of myself as chosen by Andraste, not in the way they wanted me to be. Her Herald, her prophet. It never rang true. After meeting the Divine in the fade, I walked away with a few answers, a few more questions. Some, Cassandra among them, counted it against me -– that I was just in the right place at the right time -- it didn’t seem that way to me. It seemed, perhaps, even more intended.  

I followed my brother into the quiet, deserted hallway where I heard the voices. I might have ignored them, kept walking, but The Divine called out to me. I heard the womans voice high and pleading and I hesitated -– looking after my brothers retreating shoulders.  

Was he really there? I like to think that Andraste chose me for my love and devotion to someone outside of myself. Besides, that was the first moment I was forced to put Thedas ahead of my own desires. My first test as Inquisitor. I like to think he wasn’t there at all.  

If it was Garret in that hall, then surely he perished with the hundreds of others. For a long time, this is what I believed.  

My grief was short, like a melody cut off before the key change. Something that builds and builds to nothing. I was suddenly the Herald, responsible for all of Thedas. The girl who lived before, who protected her brother the best she could, thought of mostly herself, who was consumed with the hurt of the past -– she was gone in a flare of green light.  

Sometimes I wonder how things might have changed should I have found him again. I have never stopped looking.  

Sometimes Josie or Leliana brings me news of someone claiming to be related to the Inquisitor, or of a sighting –- someone who looks like Garret boarding a ship to Antiva. Someone who could be him travelling through the Emprise.  

Sometimes I believe it -– in a dream.  

I move backwards through my life, my memories are viscous, I swim through them propelled by my regrets. The things I see there are facsimiles or half-truths, things only remembered or imagined and therefore fallible.  

I have lied awake with Thom near me in the bed, his arm curled around my shoulders to catch me as I float back. I have said all these things aloud to him. He knows about regrets.  

Here is what I dream:  

# 

He finds me in the Frostbacks, at Haven. Maybe he was nearby when the explosion happened, on his way to the Conclave or camped out in a cave with other loyalist mages, too afraid to leave. Maybe he was protecting them.  

That sounds right.  

He’s protecting a group of loyalist mages in a cave in the Hinterlands and he sees the Breach tear open the sky and he knows something has happened. 

He guesses that Gerault might have been there; maybe he even suspects I would try to find him there. 

He’s worried.  

He comes to Haven.  

He arrives after our first attempt to close The Breach, while I am unconscious and they are first calling me Herald. He doesn’t realise right away that when they say ‘Herald’ they are talking about me. Why would he? I was never the devout one in the family. He is asking around, asking, “Has anyone seen my brother the Templar? Or my sister, Anias?”  

Cassandra hears him outside the Chantry and she pulls him to the side, “Your sister, what is her name?” 

When he repeats it, Cassandra becomes very quiet –- she doesn’t have to become this way, I suppose she’s just herself -– stoic and impassable. She tells him, “I know your sister” and she tells him the story.  

I like that Cassandra tells him and I don’t have to. I wouldn’t be able to get through it, I would laugh.  

She lets him into the house where they have me. I am asleep, I was like that for three days, and Garret is sick with worry. He holds my hand –- the one with the mark –- he is not afraid of it. How could he be? He believes in Andraste, he believes in me.  

When I wake, it is not the frightened elf girl with the firewood, it is my brother in the room with me. I am overjoyed to see him, I cry. I know I would cry, because until that moment I hadn’t allowed myself to.  

From then, he is beside me. My advisor in all things, the chantry, the mages -– he is a devout Andrastian and a man with a thirst for knowledge. His magical studies are invaluable; he rivals Solas in his knowledge of magical theorems. I am better prepared for what is to come.  

#  

Redcliff goes differently.  

Garret is a mage and he understands what is happening better than I. He would counsel me to try for the Templars. He was always too lenient in his views of the chantry. He would say that without the Templars the mages cannot thrive, and I would take his hands in mine and say, _you can thrive_. 

It is what I wanted for him when he was a boy -– a life of his own. I tried to give it to him then, and failed, I would provide him with it now.  

What would he say in that dark future? Eyes blazing with the red of the corrupted lyrium, would he chant the benedictions like Cassandra? He would praise Andraste that I had returned to him, certainly, that I hadn’t died. It occurs to me that he would then know how it felt, as I did, to think his sibling was gone from him forever. When I freed him from the cell he would take me in his arms and hold me with a conviction he never had before.  

“I’m sorry,” he would tell me, a new understanding between us, “I should have left with you that night.”  

He would have an instant repartee with Dorian. The two are alike in my mind, and complimentary in their differences. They would bicker over the mages and Templars, maybe Dorian would help Garret see as I do. How easily they would have fallen in with each other. I see a glimpse of my brother in the mage from Tevinter and when he smiles, when he calls me friend, I see my brother in his smile.  

So Redcliff might have gone differently elsewhere as well.  

It was no secret to me that my brother also preferred the company of men. In the circle, he had a lover, a mage named Desmond. I wonder if Garret chose to remain in the circle because of him.  

When I accompany Dorian to the inn in Redcliff, I am furious. I am incensed.  

“I prefer the company of men, my father disapproves.” 

“I’ll need you to explain that.” 

“Did I stutter? Men, and the company thereof. As in sex. Surely you’ve heard of it?” 

“I’ve more than heard of it actually,” I say this time, different from before, and Garret speaks up.  

“Turns out the Trevelyan family has more lenient ideals when it comes to their mage sons.”  

Dorian looks at him as though for the first time and I am happy I can give him this, this chance to see a brother and a sister, a familial relationship that supports, that holds up. 

I leave the inn this time, and it’s Garret who stays.  

# 

In Skyhold Garret is somewhat elusive.  

This is what he must have been like, I realise, all those years in the circle. Hidden in a musty basement, nose deep in some magical tome, surrounded by cobwebs and hastily scrawled notes. He is never there when I need help with a noble; he is no good to me when Josephine introduces the visiting dignitaries.   

Josephine attempts, for a time, to produce us both –- the Trevelyan siblings -– for the populace. Garret will have none of it. “Besides,” he reminds us, “my family doesn’t hold me in very high regard.”  

“You are the only remaining son of the Trevelyan household,” Josephine chides, “you are their heir.” 

“Annabelle can be their heir; she is already popping out the required children.” 

We are one mind, in this at least.  

As predicted by the ambassador, letters arrive from our parents. Tentative extensions of communication that reach out across the deep wound of time. Garret gets the chance to meet his nephew and nieces, for Annabelle has had another daughter. I allow him this visit to the Free Marches without me. I send him with guards, a delegate that flies the inquisitions banner. No one will trifle with him any longer, not with my protection.  

I would like to see the reunion, maybe it would be a balm for me as well, but I am still the Inquisitor, even in this dreamscape.  

# 

The demon in the fade doesn’t change his taunt, not even in this version of my life. His words are cruel and cutting and always the same. _When it counted, you failed._ _You will_ _only fail again._   

This time Garret is with me in the aftermath, when I wake up sweating from the nightmare I wander down to the cellars and find him sitting among the cobwebs, nodding off into his open book. I sit next to him and he regards me over the dusty pages.  

“If I hadn’t gone to the circle Anias, I would never have survived.”  

He doesn’t have to say more than that, the communication between us has always been rooted in using the least amount of words to get the point across. A necessity of our secret liaisons, our hastily scrawled notes. When we were children we had a secret language that only the two of us would understand. A shorthand, I don’t remember it much now. I think about, not for the first time, Garrets harrowing. How strong he must have been to survive and endure, how no matter the amount of love I had for my sibling, I could never have helped him with this. I could never have protected him from the fade.  

When I return to bed we share our traditional goodbye,  

“Rest gentle, Garret.” 

“Sleep sound, Nia.”  

And I do.  

# 

I imagine he would speak to Thom at some point (Blackwall still then).  

He would take Blackwall aside after our trip to the Storm Coast. I don’t know exactly what he would say and Thom won’t tell me, not even after we agree there will be no secrets between us. It is the kind of secret I like that he keeps; I am not offended by it, although maybe I will chide Garret at some point for this brotherly overture.  

“I’ve been with men before you know. “  

“What?”  

“Blackwall isn’t my first.”  

“I… don’t want to hear about that Anias.”  

“Don’t treat me like one of your chantry sisters, I’m not some naïve virgin…” 

“I _really_ don’t want to talk about it!”  

“Is that so, because Cole said something yesterday that made me think you _did_ want to discuss it.”  

“Not anymore. Point very much taken.”  

Cole would say something like: “Always trying to protecting him, but _he_ is the brother, he just wants to be _the_ _brother_.”  

I would smirk. I am not upset. This public conversation is a part of the scripted drama I have created for myself, Anias gets the sibling she always wanted, Anias is sometimes just a girl.  

Garret and I never discussed our childhood crushes or even the lovers of our youth, not with more than a passing comment.  

We never had time.  

# 

“The night isn’t over yet, may I have this dance, lady Trevelyan?” Blackwall holds out his hand and bows. He looks like a lord in his Inquisition formal wear; he looks like one of the lords back home. I am amused by the thought, not repulsed as I might have been once. My heart is not heavy in this version, I am not thinking about my broken family and my shirked responsibilities. In this version, my eyes twinkle with mischievousness, and I curtsy. He is surprised, shocked even, and he laughs.  

“So she can be a lady!”  

“When the night requires it.”  

I place my hand in his, “I didn’t know you danced?”  

“I did once, in another life.” He places his hand on the small of my back and leads me in the steps.  

I let him. 

When the music fades, we are smiling, enchanted (this part is not different). I notice Garret has been watching from the shadows of the archway (this part is). When our eyes meet he shakes his head, dispelling the smile on his face, trying to look serious and I laugh.  

“Jealous brother? I think I know a mage who would dance with you!”  

Garret bites his lip, not able to keep the smirk off his face. “I see, the Inquisitor has no time to share a dance with her brother.”  

Blackwall is smiling too, he is used to this, finds it endearing. He hands me off and wanders back into the palace chuckling good-naturedly while Garret twirls me just a little too fast, laughing while I spin out of control.    

# 

One day I head to the stables to see Blackwall and he’s not there. He’s not anywhere. One of Leliana's agents tells me he’s missing. I don't want to relive this part. In this version, Garret is with me.  

I come to him in tears, “Blackwall is gone! No note, no message, he’s left!” and Garret takes my arms in his hands and squeezes my shoulders. He looks me in the eyes, really looks and he promises, “We’ll find him.” And he pulls me into his chest. I clutch his shirt while I cry. It is not like me to cry like this, but rage is hard to hold onto when Blackwall is involved.  

When Blackwall is revealed to be Thom Ranier, Garret is outraged on my behalf. He is as mad as I was in the tavern in Redcliff.  

He is stoic, though, when he is mad. He absorbs, turns inwards. He sits very still with his chin caught between his thumb and forefinger and his elbow propped in his other fist. He keeps his eyes on me while I pace, evaluating my hurt. He insists on being the one to confront Ranier in the cell in Val Royeaux, I protest.  

“Let me save you from this Anias.”  

“I don’t need saving.”  

“I know that.”  

I let him shoulder this one thing; I let him bear it for me.  

When he arrives to confront Ranier in the cell, Thom isn’t surprised.  

I don’t know what they would say, exactly, the inverse of their previous confrontation.  

Or maybe Garret would say this _:_  

“Did Anias ever tell you about the scars on her arm? The burns? I have done things I was not proud of. I have heard the whispers of the demons in the fade and I have seen the face of temptation. I know what it is to die and be born again. To have a second chance. If I am worthy of her love, you can also be worthy.”  

# 

When we reach the well of Sorrows, I know who should drink.  

Dorian is incensed at the idea, “I don’t want to risk losing you to a well!”  

Garret is placating, “I _can do_ this.”  

I have to agree with Dorian, “Garret, I have only the one brother left.”  

“One of us has to drink.” He tells me, “Let’s keep it in the family.”  

His point is clear, we hardly know Morrigan, neither of us trust her fully and she has already proved in this instance that her desire for knowledge is akin to Corypheus’ desire for power. She would have had us kill every elf in this temple to get her hands on the knowledge in this well.  

Solas will not drink, he’s the only elf with us, Garret is a mage and more capable of wielding the power. Furthermore, he is a voracious devourer of knowledge, if any of us can use the well to help our cause –- it is he. 

I allow it.  

# 

In the final battle, he is beside me. We defeat Corypheus together. It is one of many such triumphs with my brother at my side.  

I feel differently, standing on the parapets with him there. I feel our achievement like a boon inside me -– a true gift, not an exchange. In this version of my life, I did not have to sacrifice my brother to become the Herald or the Inquisitor, and I don’t feel the result as bittersweet.  

Instead, it is sugar on my tongue.  

It is true victory.  

# 

I am laying here now, thinking _h_ _e i_ _s with me_.  

On this rocky path, grass grows sporadically over dilapidated Elven ruins. The crossroads have expelled me in this clearing, the great shimmering face of the Eluvian above me, fading off into the blue of the sky. Solas is here too. He is explaining something, it's hard to hear him over the pounding of the blood in my head, the pain in my arm. I think he is telling me that the mark will kill me and I am not surprised, I have known it for months.  

The green glow has slowly been creeping up my arm, a little at a time, barely noticeable at first. At first, the pain only bothered me in the field, after closing a rift or opening one. All this time, my brother has remained close to me, a soft glowing light in the darkness of my mind. When I think of the future, it is no longer some fantasy of Thom and me – there are no longer squabbling children or rowdy dogs, there is just blackness and the glimmer of my brother's presence just beyond my reach.  

I have felt him there, less a ghost and more like a solid person the closer I have come to this moment. Now, Solas is above me, the hardened silence of the other Eluvians behind and somewhere beyond, my Thom crying my name. I feel the soft stippling of the grass under my right hand, I close my eyes and imagine the rolling lawn of our youth and when I open them he is there on my left – my brother.  

He is unchanged. Not the brother of my fantasies, the one who did all these things I have described, the one who might have existed -- he is my brother as he was the night I saw him last. Young, strawberry blonde hair too long, blue eyes heavy with sadness, a bruise creeping up to his hairline. He is holding onto the hand that bears the mark, willing it with steady pressure not to fly apart, not to burn me up in its brightness.  

“It’s alright.” I tell him, “I’m ready.”  

Solas looks down at me with something like pity. “I don’t think you are,” he says.  

 _Let me go, let me see my family again. Andraste has kept me, guided me, maybe she even chose me – and I’ve come so far._  

Solas kneels, he looks at my left hand and I think, for a moment, he sees my brother there too.  

“I cannot stop it, I _am_ sorry. But I can delay it for a little while.”  

I don’t want to be delayed, I’ve been kept here long enough. I feel like I am trapped in that in between -- that stage of waiting for the inevitable.  

When we were young, my family visited Ferelden. As the ship sailed over the Waking Sea, I remember shooting around the deck like a loose cannon, starting fights with my brothers and annoying my sister until my mother sat me down and forced me to fold my hands underneath me.  

"Anias, you must be patient."  

That’s how I feel now -- like I am sitting on my hands waiting to die.  

I try to capture some other part of that moment in my mind. Me, eight-years-old, sea water on my face and the salt breeze tangling my hair. An eighteen-year-old Gerault is letting five-year-old Garret hit him over and over with a wooden sword. They collapse laughing while sixteen-year-old Annabelle practices singing some sailing chanty. I cringe, complaining loudly from where I’ve been sat that ‘belle won’t be quiet and Garret is having all the fun. We were all together.  

Solas reaches over, his hand hovering above me. Slowly Garret passes my blazing fist to Fen’Harel.  

“Don’t worry sister,” Garret whispers somewhere close to my face, “I’ve always been the patient one.”   

 

When I tell Thom this story he cries.  

We are laying in the bed and he is burying his bearded face into my chest, arms wrapped around my middle. I stroke his hair down with my right hand, trying to comfort him, my useless left arm awkward at my side. I’m not sure what to do with it yet, how to hold it so it feels normal.  

Thom’s voice is muffled in my shirt, “Your brother is a good bloke,” he sniffs, “waiting a little longer.”  

If Solas has his way, Garret won’t be waiting long. I find I’m no longer interested in dying, after all – with the passing of our father last year there aren’t that many Trevelyan's left.  

When I’m able to travel Thom and I book passage to the Free Marches.  

The salt sea breeze tangles my too long hair and when I close my eyes, I hear the laughter of children.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> More info about Garret: http://aniastrevelyan.tumblr.com/garret  
> More info about Anias: http://aniastrevelyan.tumblr.com/anias
> 
> "Rest you gentle" "Sleep you sound" is a lovely little endearment lifted from my favourite book, Firelord by Parke Godwin. Seriously, it's beautiful and you should read it. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/479525.Firelord


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